


We've Got Work to Do

by Mary Reed (Mary_Reed)



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/F, Here There Be Spoilers, Inspired by my latest ME2 playthrough because I can't stop playing these games, ME2 spoilers, Mass Effect 2, angsty, sorry about that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-18
Updated: 2015-10-18
Packaged: 2018-04-27 00:19:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5026384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mary_Reed/pseuds/Mary%20Reed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Commander Shepard finally has some downtime after being newly resurrected by Cerberus. On her new, Cerberus-made ship she contemplates her new life. And does some solid pining for Liara, her lover pre-death. Angst ensues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We've Got Work to Do

            “Of course, anything I can do Commander.”

            Shepard had just finished asking Miranda Lawson, Cerberus operative and head of Project Lazarus, if not all then at least some of the questions she’d been hoarding since she awoke on the Cerberus ship. So, Miranda was genetically modified. It explained her level of confidence; or, if not confidence, then at least security in her abilities. Shepard couldn’t help but detect something lurking beneath the pragmatic exterior. She made a note to try to learn more about Miranda outside of her DNA and left the sparse, professional office.

            She had already chatted with Joker about his life the past two years, picked up a shopping list from the mess sergeant and a booze list from Dr. Chakwas, and spoken to her new Yeoman (who was attractive in a way that made Liara flash to the front of her mind whenever they moved near anything that felt like flirting). Shepard knew that they needed to move forward with the mission, to recruit the scientist on Omega and whomever else the Illusive Man had thrown on the list, but she needed a moment to breathe.

            Shepard looked at the levels available on the elevator, and saw with a bit of shock that the top level of the ship was the “Commander’s Quarters.” With growing curiosity, she reached a scarred hand out and hit the button, watching the doors slam shut. When they reopened, Shepard was greeted with a small hallway leading to a single door. She walked forward, and was pleasantly surprised to see a modestly large room, sectioned off partially by transparent wall and some stairs leading down into a more casual living area. She wandered over to the spacious desk to her right, sitting in the austere chair and reading the spines of all the books that had been placed there for her. She saw mostly manuals on alliance-class ships and discussions of military policy and theory, but one worn green spine stood out to her. She recognized it as a collection of asari poems, or more specifically asari love poems. It was unmistakably the same copy Liara had given Shepard the night before they made their move on Saren two years ago (so long ago, just yesterday, thousands of miles away). She wondered how it had made its way onto the ship; she slid it out of place and opened the front cover. Inscribed in the front was a message, scrawled in Liara’s looping but messy handwriting.

 

_Shepard,_

_I do not know if this will ever make it back to you, or if you will even be able to remember me, but…I wanted you to have it back. Cerberus picked it up when they were searching for you after the Normandy was destroyed, and it didn’t feel right to keep it when it belongs to you. They told me they were going to try to bring you back, and I helped them find you after you went missing from the ship. I did not tell the others, as I thought it best you informed them should Cerberus be successful and if not, well there was no use giving them too much hope. If you are reading this I suppose that means that they were successful, but I do not know if you will retain your memories or not. I gave this to you the night we… well it was an important night for us. You laughed at me for giving you poems, the sappy asari scientist hopelessly in love. But you also held onto it, and that has to mean something. Wherever you are, I hope that you are ok._

_I love you._

_-Liara_

 

            Shepard looked at the picture of Liara on the desk, her freckled face gazing off at something with that scientific curiosity so at home on her face. She ran her fingers over the inscription at the bottom of the note. _I love you._ She clutched the book to her chest and walked down the stairs to the lower part of her quarters.

            Her bed was large and covered in soft gray sheets. She sat on the edge of it, putting the collection of poems in her lap and running hands along the comforter, the skin over-sensitive and unfamiliar in its newness. The old scars were there, but everything felt soft. Her callouses were gone, her trigger finger smooth and her wrist no longer grooved in line with her omni-tool. Suddenly, she remembered vividly the night she and Liara had first been together. Liara had reached out and run her fingers over a scar on Shepard’s abdomen, concern in her eyes. She had laughed, assured the young asari that it was a wound long healed, and moved Liara’s hand from the scar up to her lips.

            Shepard pulled up the side of her shirt, hand searching for the scar that Liara had so concentrated on, and she couldn’t feel it. She looked, saw a barely discernible line just below her ribcage, and realized that it had been smoothed over sometime during her reconstruction. Her short nails scraped across the skin, desperately feeling for something to anchor her, but they just slid across the smooth skin. Why did everything have to be so _different_?

            Suddenly Shepard was sobbing, arms wrapped around herself as the enormity of what she had lost in the last two years slammed into her. She did not know where Liara was, or if she was ok. Garrus was in the wind; Tali seemed to have aged a decade in the last two years, speaking with not only the authority of a leader of her flotilla but with all of the weight that accompanied such a position. This Normandy may have looked like the old one, but it was not the same. It did not smell the same, or feel the same. The halls here were colder, and she did not recognize any of the faces that passed within them.

            “Commander, you’re needed in the cockpit. Mr. Moreau would like to know where to send the ship, and he is attempting to sabotage my hardware, which could jeopardize the guiding systems.” EDI’s mechanical voice sounded over the speakers, startling Shepard back to the present.

            “Aww come on, don’t rat me out!” said Joker, his voice crackling through the microphone.

            Shepard took a shaking breath in, and responded. “I’ll be down in just a minute. Thanks for alerting me, EDI. Joker, stop attacking the AI. That’s an order.”

            “Yeah yeah, loud and clear Commander.”

            She wiped the tears from her face with a too-smooth hand, tucked her shirt back into her standard issue uniform, and took another breath. She moved back towards the door, sliding Liara’s book back into its place on this bookshelf that was theoretically hers. Her fingers lingered on its spine, drifting down the ridges even as she moved away from her desk. She sent one last glance towards the photo of Liara on the desk, and then turned forward and opened the door to the hall.

            There was work to do.


End file.
